A to Z
by Luddles
Summary: Twenty-six drabbles about Zack and Aerith, each one's prompt starting with a different letter of the alphabet. Full of fluff and cuteness!
1. A

**Disclaimer: I don't own Final Fantasy: Crisis Core or any other Final Fantasy games for that matter.**

**A/N: I had the brilliant revelation that Aerith starts with A and Zack starts with Z and thus their names encompass the entire alphabet when put together, so I decided to write this. It will have one prompt for every letter of the alphabet… and will mostly be full of fluff.**

**A is for Airplanes**

"Zack," said Aerith, leaning over the man who was lying on the floor of the dilapidated church. He opened one sky-blue eye and grinned.

"Yeah?" he asked, sitting up and giving her his full attention. Aerith readjusted her position, now facing Zack instead of her flowers.

"Do you ever have to ride on airplanes when you go on missions?" Aerith asked. Zack chuckled under his breath as he watched the wide eyes of the beautiful girl across him. She was as curious as ever, always asking as many questions as he could answer. Now he knew what Angeal felt like. Aerith wanted to know anything and everything about the world above, even though, as she always said, she was too afraid to venture there.

"Yes, I do," Zack said, "helicopters too."

Aerith bit her lip, looking down at her hands, which were folded in her lap. "They sound really scary. How does something that big… fly?"

Zack shrugged. "I got nothin'. You'd have to ask Hojo or some other scientist with textbooks for brains," he replied. "It doesn't really matter how they fly, it just matters that they can."

Aerith looked like she was thinking, still puzzling over the giant metal vehicles and how exactly they managed to cross the sky with the ease of songbirds. Zack could practically see the gears turning in her brain. Aerith was remarkably inventive and intelligent, but without much of a formal education (not that he'd really gotten one either in the hick down he'd come from; heck, he'd been more interested in girls than school anyway) there were some phenomena that she simply could not understand. She attributed these to magic or miracles, and Zack knew it. He sometimes teased her about it, but deep down he knew that he had no better answer.

That did not stop Zack from teasing her as much as possible, though. While Aerith was still thinking about airplanes, Zack leaned in close and bumped his nose against her, startling her into attention. He would never get used to the way her eyes brightened and always flicked to his whenever she noticed him looking at her. "Maybe it's magic," he whispered.

Aerith rolled her eyes and pushed him off. "Maybe," she said, tucking her hair behind her ear and returning to her flowers.

Zack smiled as he watched her work. If there was one thing he knew for certain it was that Aerith had more magic in her than any airplane.


	2. B

**Disclaimer: Hi. I wish I could steal Zack, but then Aerith would be lonely. So neither of them belong to me. **

**A/N: So… this one was hard to come up with anything for. I feeling I'm being so goshdarn TYPICAL. I almost wanted to make this one my name… haha, my name starts with a B. Guesses? Well, as I don't belong in Final Fantasy, I decided to instead write about those pretty, sparkly things that are otherwise known as Zack's eyes. **

**B is for Blue**

It was cloudy again. Zack hated cloudy days almost as much as he hated being stuck on a mission (away from Aerith, I might add) in some desolate mining town. There were cloudy days all the time in Midgar too, but Zack found some way to ignore them. He felt like Aerith was like a beam of sunshine, and so as long as she was around, there were no cloudy days, just a bright blue sky. Or maybe green, her eyes were green, after all. But green skies mean tornadoes.

Zack sighed.

He couldn't win today.

Right now, he was on break, sitting in a dingy diner with Kunsel and Luxerie. The poor cadet looked scared out of his shorts to be sitting with two SOLDIER second-classes, and it didn't help that he idolized Zack. Kunsel was busy teasing Luxerie, and Zack was just watching them absent-mindedly, nursing a cup of gradually chilling coffee that never tasted very good in the first place. The diner was mostly gray, but the seats were a fading red. This whole place was mostly gray, and Zack hated it.

Nearly as bad as Midgar…

He had seen one shop earlier that had, of all things, paper in brilliant colors, every color of the rainbow. Kunsel said it was supposed to be used for origami, but Zack did not know what that was. He was planning on getting some and writing Aerith a letter. The only dilemma? He had no idea what her favorite color was.

Zack jumped when his phone vibrated, nearly knocking over his mug of coffee. Kunsel shot him a questioning look and Zack pulled his phone out of his pocket, flipping it open to check the caller ID. It was Aerith. He smiled.

"It's either Angeal or your girlfriend, and seeing as you're sitting around drinking coffee on your free time instead of training, Angeal probably isn't happy with you," Kunsel reasoned.

"So it's the girl?" Luxerie asked.

Zack did not reply, but answered the phone. "Hi, Aerith!" he chirped, much to Kunsel's chagrin.

"Told you," he muttered to Luxerie.

Zack kicked him under the table.

"_Hi, Zack,"_ Aerith said, _"How is your mission going?"_

"Eh, okay. It's pretty boring, if you ask me. But Angeal says it's good for me to travel and go on missions in lots of different places, so I guess mining towns in the middle of nowhere that have monster infestation problems count," Zack sighed. Aerith laughed at him, though, which made him smile. "Hey, I've got something to ask you," he said.

"_What is it?" _Aerith asked.

"What's your favorite color? I was just wondering," he tried to be nonchalant, but he could practically tell that Aerith knew he was asking her for a reason.

"_Umm… I guess I like pink," _Aerith replied, a little hesitantly. Zack's mind instantly went to the pink ribbon that he bought her on their first date (which was _not_ a date if you asked Aerith). _"Oh, but I like blue, too. Like your eyes."_ He got the feeling that even the brightly colored paper in the store was not the same color as his mako-blue eyes, but he would look anyway. _"So Zack," _Aerith said after a long pause, _"what's yours?"_

"Green, actually," Zack said. He had realized how much he loved the color green after he moved from Gongaga to Midgar and found said color to be extremely lacking. But somewhere in the slums, there was a girl with eyes as green as the deepest forest. "Like _your_ eyes."

Aerith just laughed at him then, but she was pleasantly surprised when she went to her mailbox a few days later and found a letter, addressed to her, written on bright blue paper that could only remind her of Zack.


	3. C

**Disclaimer: If I actually made money from my fanfiction, then I would have money. As I do not… well, you get the picture.**

**A/N: C is the first letter in my brother's name. Yup. NO HIS NAME IS NOT CLOUD. But that is the name of this chapter.**

**Strangely enough, it does not involve Cloud Strife very much. **

**Short chapter is short.**

**C is for Clouds**

"Hey, you know why else you should see the sky someday?" Zack asked offhandedly, the conversation somehow turning back to Aerith's fear of the sky.

"Why is that?" Aerith asked. Zack was laying on his stomach in the aisle of the church, watching her as she gardened. She was watching him too – making sure he wasn't looking _too_ close. In actuality, she had little to worry about; Zack tended to stare off into space rather than at any part of her anatomy. But deep down inside, she knew that when he was staring off into space, he was thinking about her.

"Clouds," Zack replied.

Aerith shot him a confused look, her mind instantly flooded with a blonde cadet that Zack had taken a particular liking to. She would call them 'best friends' if that wasn't already what she called Zack and herself. Although, perhaps Zack and herself were something else entirely.

"Not like Cloud," Zack laughed, sensing her confusion. "They're big, fluffy, white things that float around in the sky. But sometimes they're black or gray and they make it rain. And snow!" Zack continued on in his description, rambling about the different shapes that clouds could form themselves into and how people watched them and talked about what they looked like.

Aerith giggled lightly and Zack paused in is explanation. "They sound weird," she said cheerfully.

Zack just grinned at her. "Yeah, you would think so, wouldn't you?"

Aerith tilted her head to the side. "What's that supposed to mean?" she asked, returning to her flowers. Zack thought for a moment, trying to find meaning in his own words, which had been said so offhandedly that he was not sure what they really meant.

"It was just something… I expected from you. Sometimes you think normal things are weird, but it's just because you're you, Aerith. And I guess by now I'm used to it," he explained, sitting up and crossing his legs.

"Okay… well, when you take me to see the sky, you have to show me some of these clouds," Aerith said.

"I will," Zack said, continuing to more firmly glue his eyes to hers. She wanted to glance back down at her flowers, anything to break that gaze, but Zack's stare was more powerful than anything she'd ever imagined. If she felt like the sky was sucking her in, then his eyes were a thousand times more powerful. But she didn't mind. In fact, at the back of her mind, she discovered she rather liked the feeling. "I promise."


	4. D

**Disclaimer: Although it starts with a D, this disclaimer is not my story. It is simply here to tell you that I don't own Final Fantasy.**

**A/N: Hi. I wanted to write about Demyx. But the sane part of me said that he isn't in Final Fantasy. I said screw that, Zack and Aerith are in Kingdom Hearts, after all. **

**So they're in the Olympus Coliseum world from Kingdom Hearts for this one. Yes, I KNOW Aerith does not show up there. Pretend, dears. (Pretend Angeal is there too.)**

**Demyx is still not involved. T^T**

**D is for Destiny**

Zack knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that he was destined to become a hero. After all, he trained almost constantly and it was his dream. Angeal always told him to embrace his dreams (and to protect his honor, because dreams an honor went hand in hand, and both made an appearance whenever Angeal opened his mouth). He was going to be amazing someday.

Aerith knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that she was destined never to find true love. After all, who would want a girl who stayed in the shadows and grew flowers all day? She was strange, different from everyone else, and quite plain. But she did not care, because she was quite content with her flowers. She didn't need boys to make her happy, did she?

Only one of them was right.

"Yeah, Angeal, I'll be back tomorrow!" Zack called over his shoulder as he ran out of the coliseum. He had a date with a certain spot on the corner where he knew the most beautiful girl in Athens always passed on her way to her garden.

"At _seven_, remember, okay!" Angeal replied.

"Right! Eight!" Zack replied.

Angeal smacked himself in the forehead. He would personally go and _drag_ his student out of bed if he did not arrive at the coliseum promptly at seven o'clock.

Zack ran as fast as his legs would carry him, knowing full well that he was going to be late. He knew he shouldn't have stuck around to chat with Hercules for so long. The girl, Aerith, as he'd been told her name was by one of his friends, always passed that corner at exactly four-fifteen, and it was already past then. Zack was hoping she'd be late.

Normally, Zack was fine talking to girls. Actually, it was his specialty, aside from fighting. But when Aerith was involved, he suddenly found himself unable to speak. She was like an angel, or a goddess straight out of a myth. If he were any more poetic, he would have called her a muse. Zack could not remember seeing anyone else more beautiful than she, and he was eternally glad that he accidentally ran into her one fateful day a few weeks previous. Since then, he'd learned as much as he could about the girl from a semi-reliable source (his friend Kunsel) and waited for her to pass every day.

He felt like this was just as much destiny's work as him becoming a hero.

Today, though, he was destined to be late. And, thankfully, so was she. But this caused something quite unpleasant at first: a collision.

Zack ran across the street to the corner he always waited at and crashed headlong into someone who was walking along the street, knocking both of them to the ground. He landed underneath the person, with her (it was a girl, right?) cloak over his face. When he brushed it off and pulled himself up, balanced on his elbows but still laying down, he took a moment to assess his situation. Aerith was sprawled across his lap.

Aerith was…

AERITH.

"Oh! Uh, I'm so sorry," Zack said, helping her to her feet.

"Huh? No, it's my fault," she said, readjusting her dress. As she glanced back up at the man she'd fallen on, she found herself staring into deep blue eyes, the same color as the sky above. Her breath caught in her chest, and she threw out her opinion of destiny in a matter of four seconds.

"I'm Zack," said Zack, still staring straight at her eyes as he extended a hand.

She placed her hand in his, and, thinking it was polite, introduced herself. "Aerith."

Zack smirked, a glimmer of mischievousness in his eyes, and brought her hand to his lips. "It's a pleasure," he murmured, pressing a soft kiss to her knuckles.

Her face flushed pink, and she tugged her hand away from his, pulling it in to her chest. "So… I'll see you around?"

"Actually, are you doing anything today?" Zack asked. "We could… I dunno…" he couldn't stop himself from continuing, "…go on a date?"

Aerith was the first girl who'd ever said yes right away.

Zack knew it was destiny.


	5. E

**Disclaimer: Ask yourself this: would Zack be dead if I owned Final Fantasy? No. So obviously, I don't.**

**A/N: Thanks to everyone who's reading this thus far! E is the first letter of… my real name (for those of you who actually read the authors' notes, B is the first letter of my nickname) and also 'elephant'. What elephants have to do with anything in Final Fantasy, I don't know, so I'm just gonna go with something else. **

**E is for Endings**

"Do you think," Aerith began, one particularly cold night, as she and Zack were curled up in a blanket on the couch in his cluttered apartment, "our story will have a happy ending?"

Zack sighed, attempting to think, but his sleep-cluttered brain was not going anywhere. "Uh… what, like that 'happily ever after' that always comes at the end of fairy tales or whatever?" he asked, rubbing one eye. Aerith had very nearly woken him up out of a dead sleep, and he was finding it impossible to come up with a single intelligent response for her. Not that he could ordinarily, but that was another point in itself.

"Like that," Aerith replied.

"I hope so," Zack sighed, pulling her closer to him. "But life isn't a fairy tale, or so they say."

"Who's they?"

"Dunno."

There was a long silence, in which Zack almost fell asleep again. But before he could, he realized that what he had just said, about life not being a fairy tale and things not always working out, had probably worried Aerith. And he would not stand for that. "Aerith," he said, "I know! It has to have a happy ending, because the heroes _always_ get the happy endings." He grinned, pleased with his answer and waiting for his response, but soon realized that she had fallen asleep.

He decided to tell her in the morning.


	6. F

**Disclaimer: This is a fanfiction. FANfiction. **

**A/N: …Angeal likes plants… **

**I was not surprised at all to read in the e-mails his fangirls send Zack that Angeal likes plants and dogs. Actually, I found it kind of cute. So I wrote this. But it does involve Zack and Aerith (obviously, this is a Zack and Aerith fanfiction…)**

**F is for Flowers**

Zack had seen a lot of weird things in his lifetime. He was guessing that had something to do with the people he spent most of his time with, namely the SOLDIER first class. But this… _This_ beat all.

Angeal Hewley, the massive, dangerous, muscle-bound SOLDIER first and tiny, sweet, girly Aerith Gainsborough were both kneeling in the flowerbed, planting daisies and begonias in the rays of summer sun filtering through the hole in the ceiling. His mentor's gloves were discarded on the first row of pews, along with the enormous blade that Angeal always carried. He had donned a pair of gardening gloves instead, which were pink and covered in dirt. Somehow, they actually fit Angeal's huge hands. Zack knew one thing for certain: he was never going to let Angeal live this one down. He wished he had brought a camera.

Zack was lying on the pew alongside the Buster Sword, absent-mindedly listening to the conversation. Angeal and Aerith were talking about proper plant care or something, and he honestly did not care what it was. He was busy watching Aerith now. Well, and sometimes Angeal. Although the tank-sized man was comical in his nearly-too-small gloves, covered in dirt and surrounded by flowers, Aerith had unequivocally caught Zack's eye. She always left him wondering how she could be so beautiful even when she was kneeling in the soil pulling weeds, a smudge of dirt across her nose and grass stains on her knees.

Her hair was, as always, pulled up in a pink ribbon—the ribbon _he _bought her on the first day they met. Strands of silky brown hair were straying from her braid, dancing around her pale face and her sparkling, emerald-colored eyes. She was smiling daintily as she lovingly cared for her flowers, not minding the fact that her white sundress was dirtied in the soil. Zack sighed dreamily, tucking one hand under his chin as he watched his beautiful angel in her garden. "Aerith…" he breathed her name, not even realizing that he'd said it.

"What, Zack?" she replied, and he nearly blushed, feeling the color beginning to dust his cheeks.

"Nothin'," he replied, "I was just thinking."

"That could be dangerous," Angeal said with a chuckle, slipping one of his gloves off so he could ruffle Zack's hair. "What's on your mind, Puppy?"

"What's _always_ on my mind, Angeal?" Zack chortled.

Angeal's eyes flickered up to Aerith, and he grinned. "That pretty girl sitting across from me, I'm certain."

Zack and Aerith both laughed, somewhat out of embarrassment. "How sweet," Aerith remarked, "If I wasn't covered in dirt, I'd hug you."

Zack sighed. "You can hug me later," he said impishly. For now, he was settling on watching the two of them in the garden; his mentor and his love.

The angel and Angeal.


End file.
